


Through the Bitter Water

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Drinking, Dubious Consent, Epistolary, Implied Mina/Lucy, M/M, Somnophilia, Vampire Turning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:15:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25219873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: Part of me always knew he would never allow me to escape his grasp.
Relationships: Dracula/Jonathan Harker, Jonathan Harker & Mina Harker
Comments: 12
Kudos: 84
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Through the Bitter Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astrospecial](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrospecial/gifts).



> If there was ever a fandom made for dubiously consensual somnophilia, it's Dracula. Thank you for giving me the chance to write this. I hope you enjoy it.

My dear Mina,

I meant to rest tonight, and to save this letter – so necessary and yet so painful – for another juncture when I might be better able to compose my thoughts, but sleep has proved evasive. When I closed my eyes it seemed I was once more in Carfax, but this time I was alone, my friends having left without realising I was no longer amongst their number, no doubt through some contrivance of the Count's. They had abandoned me to his mercies.

He was not the Count as he had been in Transylvania, old but with a strange vitality that only now becomes explicable, but the man I saw in Piccadilly intent upon his prey. Youthful he might have been, but he was every bit as cold and cruel as the man I remembered, and, even had I wanted to, I could have done nothing to prevent him from dragging me down into the very dirt in which he made his bed. There in the total darkness, he renewed the ties that bound me to him, with the earth of his homeland in my mouth choking off my cries of pleasure and the splintered sides of the box scraping against my skin.

A terrible thing, but I could not fight it. In that moment, I did not wish to.

I try to hate him, Mina. For your sake and for your dear Lucy’s if not for mine, but there are times, such as now, when I struggle to remember the reasons why I ought to do so. I try to think of the moments when I saw him at his worst, clinging bat-like to the sheer wall of his castle, or lying like a leech in his box, bloated and engorged on the blood of some poor mother’s child. It ought by rights to fill me with horror all over again, but I have witnessed too many horrors since, real and imagined. I feel only desperately sad and weary, and not only for the people who have suffered at his hand.

When I cannot sleep, I recall the eagerness with which he engaged my conversation deep into the night, and no wonder given the isolated life he must have led, with no company, or none he seemed to favour, at least. How lonely he must have been. I remember the hunger in his eyes as I spoke of London and of all that there was to be seen and to do in that bustling city, and the pang of regret I felt that such a glittering existence would not be my life, that I would perform my duties and we would part and that would be an end to the matter, unless the Count should choose to engage our services again. My instincts told me that he would not.

I found him easy company, despite the toll the late nights took on me. He could be charming when he chose, and for my part I wished to make myself agreeable, over-compensating for the many moments when I had found myself unnerved by his manner or the revulsion I'd felt at his touch when we first met.

It was on such a night that I looked up from some documents spread across the table to find the Count standing closer than I had expected. It might simply have been the effect of the wine, which was very good indeed, but I felt in that instant not revulsion, but a current of energy, shivering just beneath my skin.

Hesitant, I glanced up at him, taking in his strong features, the heavy brow and his aquiline nose. His profile was strong, but there was a delicacy to certain aspects of his face, the pale skin and eyelashes and the ruddy lips, as red and full as a woman’s. He asked me a question, and nerves gripped me, preventing me from doing anything more than stammering out my answer. His fingers curled around the back of my chair, close enough that his nails brushed against my hair. The Count regarded me for a moment with that same bitter smile, taking my strangled silence for revulsion. I wanted to explain myself, to apologise, but to do so would have been to admit that I _had_ at one point found him repulsive, even if that was no longer quite the case. I could not see my way clear to explain myself in either case.

At last he took pity on me and withdrew, having lain his hand on my shoulder, gripping it tightly for a few moments. It was warm in the room, and I’d shrugged off my jacket and lain it over the back of my chair, and his touch seemed to burn through my waistcoat and shirt so that I flushed still further than I had already.

He was in my dreams that night. I saw no need to detail it in my journal since I was quite certain it could not have been real and the memory was already fading when I put pen to paper. The exact details I have forgotten – I have dreamed too often and too vividly since then – but I recall plunging into what seemed an ocean of pleasure and that I never quite knew whether I was asleep or dreaming. Afterwards, darkness claimed me, and I knew nothing until I awoke to find morning had come, and the sun lightening my room. The Count was gone, if indeed he had ever been there, and at my throat my shaving wound appeared to have reopened, leaving a few drops of blood on my nightshirt, so little that I thought no more of it.

I should have remembered. I might have, had I not dreamed that same dream, or something very like it, many times since, even after he had left for England. I dreamed it every night during my flight from the castle, and during my recuperation in Buda-Pesth, The thought of the nuns, those good women, watching over me while I writhed in its grip and perhaps called out for him fills me with quiet horror and shame. It faded for a time on my recovery, and with your arrival in Buda-Pesth, but seeing the Count again in Piccadilly brought it back in full force.

(That poor woman. I shudder to think what might have become of her, and curse myself for how slow I was to trust the evidence of my own eyes.)

He must have known I was there. I cannot see how it could be otherwise. Indeed, was it not possible that he might already have known of my survival and escape, and arranged for me to have encountered him deliberately? But if so, then had he meant it as a sort of torment, or as a kindness?

If the latter, then his efforts were not in vain. It was that moment when I began to understand that I was not losing my mind as I feared. It is a blessing I owe to you, dear Mina, and to Dr. Van Helsing, and to all our compatriots, but, yes, also to the Count, the source and cause of all my terrors. I could admit this to no other living soul other than you, Mina, who are as a sister to me, but I cannot help but feel a sick sort of gratitude to him for that. It was a sort of kindness, as close as a creature such as he ever comes to kindness.

Part of me always knew he would never allow me to escape his grasp.

When he came to me at Dr Seward’s house, at first I thought it nothing more than the dream again. It was the same restless feverish slumber, held suspended between sleep and wakefulness and never quite knowing which was which. I had seemed to wake to the restless howls of Dr. Seward’s lunatic, and on the liminal edge of sleep the dream-world still clung to the shadows, so that they took on the form of the horrors that tormented me.

I was aware of a presence in my room, yet unable to rouse myself. I lay in an agony of fear, not knowing if I should call out, and if I did whether I should call for help or to challenge the presence. I was afraid, and not only because to call out would be to reveal I was awake and aware of his presence, but because I feared this was nothing more than a dream and if I moved or spoke in any way, I would wake up. Nor could I force myself to move – the rumpled covers seemed, in my half-dreaming state, to have been weighted with lead, so firmly did they keep my legs pinned to the bed.

Moonlight streamed through the widow, catching on motes of dust that swirled and eddied, and ultimately formed into a silvery mist that pooled on the floor by the window. One moment it seemed to take the form of a columnar figure with gleaming red eyes; the next it was merely mist, shifting and rippling in the draught from the window. Then, the moonlight dimmed, perhaps the result of a cloud crossing the face of the moon, and, no longer illuminated, the mist vanished.

I ought to have been relieved, but felt nothing but a sickly sort of disappointment, a crushing weight of grief on my chest. I might even have wept, had I not then felt the blankets begin to move. Gradually, they were drawn down by some unseen hand, and up flowed the mist to replace them, a scant inch at a time, its movements slow and gradual as if it deliberately sought not to wake me. Even through my nightshirt and the blankets which kept my legs pinned, I could feel its cool touch, and where it brushed directly against my fever-hot skin it brought only relief.

I kept my breath steady, the slow, deep rhythm of sleep. My head lay tilted towards the window, leaving my neck exposed. The mist crept over my chest, slipped up in tendrils around my throat, drawing itself ever higher. It shifted, seeming one moment intangible, the next to have the weight and mass of a man stretched out atop me, his chest to mine, his mouth so close to my throat I could feel his breath against my skin. In the depths of the mist red lights gleamed like the lights of a ship lost in fog and I saw the face of the Count, alight with hunger. Then there was nothing, not even the mist: just moonlight pooling on the bed and my body caught on the border between wakefulness and sleep. I could see nothing, but still felt it, the caress of the mist sliding along the underside of my jaw. Not the touch of a finger, but of a tongue.

He was tasting me, and still I could not bring myself to move.

The tendons of my neck ached with the strain needed to hold my head in position. The tongue reached the underside of my chin, then slipped up and over it, to my lower lip. There it lingered, and as I exhaled, I sensed that dead creature draw in my living breath, and when my next inhalation came, as it must no matter how desperately I wished to prevent it, he exhaled, feeding back to me my very breath, mingled with his. It was stale, but also sweet, and the stolen intimacy of the gesture sent a thrill of burning anticipation through me.

His mouth fastened on my throat, but he used no teeth, only his tongue, which flickered against my throat in a manner that drew from me an involuntary moan. At that sound, he stilled and eased back, and did not touch me for so long I might have begun to wonder if I’d not been dreaming after all had I not been able to feel his breath stirring my hair.

If I did not dream – and of that I was by no means certain – then I was certain he knew I was awake and fully aware of his presence. I was certain too that he relished the power he wielded over me and having me at his mercy, and that it would not be long before he took full advantage of my helplessness. Sure enough, I soon felt the cool touch of the mist on my thigh, sliding upwards and drawing up the hem of my nightshirt. It felt unmistakeably like a hand, although above me I could see nothing but that ebbing translucent mist, and through it the ceiling and walls of the room, though I could feel his weight on my chest so clearly, crushing me against the bed as though I were caught in a hag-ridden dream.

Unseen fingers bit into the underside of my knee as he hooked my leg up, bending it at the knee. His touch ghosted over my skin, leaving a trail of coolness in their wake, as I felt again that shiver of unreality and desperate longing as he fitted himself to me. He was at first insubstantial, the pressure little more than a suggestion, but as his fingers laced through mine, pressing my hands back above my head, he began to move, and the pressure intensified then, thickening and taking on form so that I could not help but cry out, pain and pleasure mingled so that I knew not where one ended and the other began, but only that both were part of the same tightly-braided rope and that I never wanted it to end.

At that moment he discarded the form of mist and coalesced above me, but if his intention was to shock or frighten me, I’m afraid he must have been disappointed. His cruel smile slipped, and the bitter anger that burned incandescent in his eyes flickered for a moment, before reigniting, stronger than ever.

He dropped his head back to my throat, and I found I had once more regained control over my limbs, although it was no kind of control at all when all I could do was bring my hand to the back of his head and bury my fingers in his hair. His parted lips brushed against my throat once more and this time I felt the scrape of his sharp teeth against the vein.

He took his time, confident I lacked the strength and the will to fight him, and still, dear merciful God, I wanted him to bite me, to take me in that way as he did in this, for he was still moving inside me, and I was helpless to prevent myself from grinding up against him, even as I fumbled beneath the pillow for the Kukri knife. For a moment, it proved elusive, and I feared he might have discovered it while I lay insensate, but then, at the very moment his teeth broke my skin, my fingers brushed against its hilt and I grasped hold. It was, perhaps, less a triumphant seizing of a weapon than my hand clenching tight as I convulsed in pleasure and pain at the sensation of his teeth piercing my skin like twin needles.

I cried out, and then he moved, writhing snakelike against me, and after the pain came a flood of the purest sweetest pleasure, like molten sunlight pouring through me. In that moment I was helpless. The haze of pleasure had caught me aloft, instantly and utterly intoxicating. At once I was lulled into a state of trance-like dreaming, while his head moved at my throat and a golden sensation thrummed through my limbs and he drove himself inside me, with only occasional sharp stabs of searing pain that only served to heighten the pleasure.

He released my hand and curled his grip around the back of my neck in a manner that reminded me of the fragility of the human skull, before he jerked back my head to open my throat still wider, and the sudden pain of his teeth worrying at my neck brought me all the way back to my senses, or very nearly. I heard my own voice, so strained that surely anyone listening could not have failed to take me for one of the asylum’s residents, begging him not to stop, while his other hand pushed down between our bodies to clasp my manhood.

I had all but forgotten the knife. Remembering it, I tightened my grip around its hilt and drew it out from beneath the pillow, meaning to drive it into his throat. In the instant before I struck I heard myself say, “I’m sorry.”

The blade impacted with nothing but air. He was already gone, forewarned by my apology or through some preternatural instinct. Into mist he dissolved, leaving my body crumpled on the bed and still rutting helplessly at the air, and then he was back, reforming above me me, his lips drawn back in a snarl. He wrenched my wrist backwards, forcing the Kukri knife from my grip. It clattered uselessly on the floor. Then his hand was on my throat. He hauled me off the bed and slammed me back against the wall, while he knelt before me, his eyes red with anger and amusement, and I realised then he must have known the knife was there all along.

“You still intend to resist me, then?” he said, his voice as courtly as ever. He leaned close, bringing his face close to the hand over my throat, and licked between his fingers, the pointed end of his tongue stinging my torn skin. “I thought you might have learned by now, my dear young friend.”

“Do not do this,” I begged. He drew back so he could see my face, his red eyes searching my features with a kind of detached curiosity which I believe must have been intended to hide his true feelings beneath.

“This is not the first time I’ve tasted your blood.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” I said, and gasped when his grip around my throat tightened for an instant, his eyes narrowing. When he relented, I grated out, “You are still a stranger here.”

“You only delay the inevitable, Mr Harker...”

“This is not Transylvania! We know what you are. We know your weaknesses. Do you think killing me will make them stop? It will only make them more determined. They will hunt you down and kill you.” Seeing that he was listening with feigned courtesy, I gripped his hand, repressing a shudder at the wetness of my own blood on his fingers. “Do not do this. I want… I intend to stop more people from dying. I say this not for my sake, but for yours.”

His eyes gleamed. “So you claim to act in my best interests? You no longer act in the capacity of my solicitor, Mr Jonathan Harker.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it, though the sound carried more of hysteria than humour and it made my throat hurt. He was eyeing me darkly.

“What do you suggest I do?”

“Pray to God for forgiveness.”

“There will be none.”

“There will be. There has to be.”

Slowly, his lips wrinkled back from his teeth in something that was somehow both smile and snarl. There was a pink film on his teeth which I stared at in horrified fascination until he swept his tongue against them, savouring every drop. His deliberate sigh of satisfaction made my stomach roil, but worse were the words that followed.

“There are in this world some dark places where even the light of your god will not reach,” he said, his voice a mockery of solemnity, yet I sensed that there was more truth to his mock-sorrow than he intended and that it hid what I suspected was a desperate yearning.

“Count,” I said, “by definition, there are not.”

He took my hand and pressed it against his chest where his heart would have beat. I felt nothing beneath my hand but cold dead flesh, and yet a wave of dizzy heat flushed through me. I wanted him still, even like this, even after I had tried, however feebly, to strike the head from his shoulders.

“Here,” he said. “This heart, which has long since ceased to beat. The light of your god–” his lip curled, “–does not shine here.” His eyes searched my face, as he pressed my hand harder against him. “Will it be you, Mr Harker, at their vanguard when they come for me? Ready to strike my head from my shoulders and drive a stake through my heart? It is not an easy thing, to kill a man so.”

“I will, if I must. I would prefer not to.”

He was so close. His chest was very white, covered with the same coarse hair that grew on the backs of his hands, and his nipples and his manhood were both dark, blood-flushed and swollen. He smelled of earth and blood and seed, I wondered how I could ever have found him repulsive, those lips full and sensual, shining wet with saliva, which might at any moment brush against mine. “Then,” he said softly, “allow me to simplify matters.”

Without warning, his grip on the back of my hand intensified. His fingers splayed over mine and forced them deeper so that my nails dug into his flesh, gouging deep gashes in his skin and drawing blood. My mouth flooded with a sudden rush of saliva, accompanied by an anticipatory thirst beyond anything I had ever felt in my short yet eventful life, beyond anything I felt in my days stumbling through the wilderness, beset by wolves and phantoms, supping water from brackish streams or tilting my head back to catch rainwater in my mouth while every shadow became those tormented, tormenting women creeping up on me.

I shook my head as I realised what the Count intended. “No.”

“You claim you intended to act in my best interests,” he said as he drew me closer. I fought and struggled, but some part of me wanted it as much as I feared it. His hand clasped my shaft as he crushed my face against his chest. I kept my lips tightly closed, felt the wetness of his blood on my lips. He drew the bloodied fingers of my hand into his mouth, his tongue flickering down between them to the webbing. I gasped at the sensation, and tasted the first of his blood in my mouth, and from that moment I could no longer resist.

His fingers caressed my scalp through my hair, urging me on as I suckled at the wound, worried at it with my teeth when the blood did not flow so freely as I would have liked. When I came, I sank my teeth into the meat of his chest, and when I regained my senses, I found myself kneeling on the bed, panting and knowing with certainty that I was irretrievably lost.

Forgive me, Mina, and I beg you will forgive Van Helsing too for letting me go. I lied to him, told him I had some private idea that I wished to investigate and which I did not feel ready to sure until I was certain it would not come to nothing. He looked at me with those piercing eyes of his and I am quite certain he suspected something of the truth. Fearing he meant to stop me, I made a passing reference to Lucy, how it had been Van Helsing’s intention to have her euthanised by someone who truly loved her (I believe that had Van Helsing met you at that time he would not have been so quick to let Lord Godalming wield the stake), and he understood, I think. He must have done, or else he would not have let me go.

One way or another, Mina, I will put a stop to the Count’s evil ways. I grow stronger by the day, and at night I hear his voice, growing in strength and clarity the closer I get. At times I have joined him in his box of earth, our bodies pressed close.

I think of Carfax, and it strikes me that it was as much a prison as Castle Dracula, and that for all the Count’s clever schemes, he would only ever have succeeding in escaping his castle in order to imprison himself somewhere equally bleak and miserable. I can no longer sustain my anger. It drains away, leaving me numbed and sorrowful. I forget how desperately I have hated and feared him all these months, and cannot prevent my thoughts from turning to poor Mr Renfield who found himself a prisoner through no fault of his own, save the whims of a mind over which he had lost control. I was likewise during my long fever, driven to extremis by exhaustion and by all that I had seen and suffered in that terrible castle and beyond.

What man would not be driven mad by such an existence? To be shut away from the light and love of God, to be damned for all eternity with no true companionship or friendship? To be feared and found loathsome by all who meet you?

The Count believes he is beyond forgiveness. I do not. I cannot believe that any creature of God’s earth can ever truly be beyond forgiveness. Perhaps I am mistaken. I pray (for the moment it seems I can still pray) that I am not.

If I am, and the Count is truly beyond saving, then take heart that I have not gone unarmed. I bring with me my Kukri knife and the crucifix. Although I can no longer bear to wear is against my skin, I carry it upon my person well-wrapped, and it brings enough comfort to outweigh my discomfort at its presence. I am reminded of how I prepared myself for my flight from his castle, yet it strikes me now that rather than fleeing him I was running towards him even then.

I am not as poor Lucy was. I am not even as the Count was, since I do not think he has ever in all his life known one-hundredth of the love that I have been lucky to experience in my own short existence. If I am certain of one thing it is that the Count is to be pitied, not feared or hated, and in some ways – not all! – I have strengths that he lacks, a faith in friendship and goodness, in God and in love.

Do what you will with this letter, Mina: I leave it entirely in your hands. Forgive me, and whatever else happens, do not follow me.

Your dearest friend,

Jonathan.


End file.
